It’s one of the most popular metric and for a good reason. The Net Promoter Score is generally seen as one of the most effective survey tools for measuring customer loyalty.

But is it really as good as the hype makes it sound? In this post, we dive into the pros and cons of the NPS to give you a realistic idea of what to expect from it and how to make the most of it.

What is Net Promoter Score?

The Net Promoter Score is a customer loyalty metric summed up into one question and a follow up question. Customers evaluate your company on a scale from 1 to 10, which will qualify them either as a promoter, passive or detractor.

MyFeelBack NPS type question

This question alone has grown to be one of the most common ways that companies gauge their customer loyalty. It's considered as an ideal customer feedback tool because it's simple, keeps the customer at the forefront, while enabling companies to make quick and decive decisions.

The Net Promoter Score PROS

1- NPS is simple

​As you can see, the concept of the NPS is all about simplicity. One, short, easy to measure question makes this survey simple and easy for the customers to fill out, but also for the marketing team that needs to analyze it.

Customers love it because it's short and to the point, yet it gives them room to provide more detailed feedback if they want to.

Companies love it because it is easy to measure and can be benchmarked, meaning you can compare your score with competitors, and compare it with previous years.

2- NPS gets clear feedback

Because it’s so simple, Net Promoter Score surveys tend to get a lot more feedback than other surveys.

The NPS survey avoids losing those users that get bored and allows you to capitalize on responses from those who usually abandon a survey, when it gets too long and tedious. Sending out a survey that your customers will actually answer to, is the key to gaining useful customer knowledge.

3- Net Promoter Score is effective

The main reason why the NPS is so popular is simply because it’s effective, and the reason it’s so effective is in its wording. The NPS metric doesn’t just ask if a customer likes a product, they ask whether or not they would stake their reputation in order to recommend it to someone they care about. This wording shifts the gears and heeds a more honest, informative response from customers.

One study shows that no matter your industry, the NPS survey question is “the best or second best predictor of repeat purchases or referrals.”

Because it’s such an effective predictor of customer loyalty, it’s seen as the frontrunner for companies trying to feel out how their customers view their company as a whole.

4- NPS introduces you to brand ambassadors

The NPS score doesn’t just give insight to your customer loyalty, it can also help your marketing team discover new brand ambassadors for your company.

Getting your customers to be brand ambassadors is marketing gold, although it can sometimes be hard to track this potential down. But when a customer gives you a score of 9 or 10 on the NPS survey, it’s fair to assume these are advocates for your product.

By nurturing your promoters, you can insure that they will talk about you and promote your company, because of how strongly they believe and feel about it.

The Net Promoter Score CONS

We’ll be honest, we don’t have a lot of cons to offer regarding the NPS survey. However, it is possible to use the NPS metric the wrong way at times, which can lead to some big mistakes that can hurt your business.

To make sure you don't go down that lane, here are a few things to keep in mind so that you don’t use the NPS hurtfully.

1- NPS a miracle metric

Because the NPS metric is simple and effective, a lot of companies rely on it too much to solve their customer loyalty issues.

The reality is, the NPS is only one question, and while it can be helpful, it can’t tell you everything about a customer’s experience.

Don’t let your NPS survey replace more thorough customer feedback surveys, that allow you to dive into details about a customer’s specific transaction or specific experience with a product.

2- The Net Promoter Score remains vague and requires follow-up

Because of its simplicity, the NPS survey is inherently vague. Do you know why someone picked 9 instead of 10? How much does that extra point matter?

These unclear issues are things that need to be discussed and analyzed within the company so that you can figure out exactly what your results are telling you.

More importantly, it’s essential to remember that each “why?” answer you receive from a customer is going to talk about something completely different and specific to their experience.

Therefore, whoever is analyzing the responses needs to be able to sort the responses into sales, marketing, or customer service issues according to positive or negative feedback received.

The NPS answers also need to integrate with other metrics you have been collecting, in order to make the most sense out of them and turn them into effective data that can be used to improve company performance.

In other words, once you get the information on why people like or don’t like your services, you need to know what to do with that information, and this can be time consuming and require multiple levels of analysis.

As you might understand, using the NPS is an important metric you should use, but if you want to get the full potential of it, you need to use it part of a full customer satisfaction strategy and dig further.

If you think that you'll miraculously solve your customer knowledge issues and get happy customers just by using the NPS metric, you're wrong. It's essential that you collect more precise information about your customers in order to understand their needs or what is making them unhappy with your company.

You can pinpoint all of this by using surveys that are very qualified, customized and asked at the right time through the right channel, all of this to make sure you are getting effective feedback.

One of those questions might be regarding a recent change, a product your customer might prefer, or making sure you've solved an issue, which will increase customer trust for instance.

In the end, when used as a part of a larger customer feedback strategy, an NPS survey is an incredibly useful, reliable tool that every business should capitalize on.